Al -
I share your anger at the pollution of our email list. And I did
think Malcolm's reply was lovely! In this case, however, it appears
that the individual used some very large list of all email addresses
known to some bitnet host... I feel quite sure that Malcolm's will have
been *by far* the least offensive reply he got, and that, probably,
even every AUDITORY member sending ten replies will only have a marginal
effect on the amount of hate mail received by this individual. I doubt
that he still has an active email account...
I think there's a problem with genuine cluelessness; people just don't
have the imagination to understand the impact of their attempts at
advertising. There's a danger of escalating the conflict (as the recent
Canter & Seigel episode highlights) ... It's a tough judgement to decide
how culpable someone is in this kind of antisocial act. If they really
didn't know better, they should have a second chance (internet liberalism).
If they persist, well, it's better to try and get their net access
removed. Retributional attacks (such as flooding their site with
messages) might have collateral victims; there is already far too much
wasted net bandwidth.
If this kind of thing becomes a more significant nuisance, we can
simply configure the list so that each message is filtered through a
moderator - with the understanding that this moderation is only to
remove unsolicited mail. Given current levels of traffic on the list,
this would hardly be a great burden. We could do this now if you think
the situation already warrants it. Let's see how things develop.
DAn.